That is exactly what Eric Marcoullier and Todd Sampson have developed with their new service, OneTrueFan, which was launched during TechCrunch Disrupt. If Eric and Todd’s names sound familiar, they were the co-founders of MyBlogLog, which was the visitor tracking service that was used across the blogosphere and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2007.

How OneTrueFan works is pretty simple. As Louis Gray explains:

“To participate, you install a browser extension (for Chrome, Firefox or Safari) and a browser bar will track your Web visits. Each time you go to a new domain or subdomain, you get 10 points. For each visit to a subsequent new page, you get an additional point. So, for example, if you visit six different pages, you have 15 total points. Once you reach 20 points on a domain, you are a fan. If you have more points than any other fan, you are the One True Fan.”

As with many of the location-based services currently available, you can win different badges and also the OneTrueFan ownership of any website.

I’ve been using OneTrueFan for the past couple weeks to see how it worked and whether I would find value from using it. That’s always the ultimate question with all of these services: What value will the user derive from using the service?

So far, I’ve found that it makes browsing and working on the web more fun, which when you spend all day sitting in front of your computer, anything to add a little more fun is always welcome. Also, it provides you some insight into what sites you’re visiting and how often you frequent them. Of course, you could get that information from your browser history but how many of us actually use our browser history options that often? Yeah, exactly.

The real value for OneTrueFan will be for the website owners once OneTrueFan launches their dashboard and API. According to TechCrunch:

“OneTrueFan will eventually launch a dashboard that allows web sites get a multi-dimensional view of their readers based upon frequency of visits, amount of content read, regularity of shares and traffic sent. Web site owners can use existing channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, to communicate with readers.

In the future, OneTrueFan will be releasing an API so that publishers can customize the experience for their visitors. In the end, the aim of OneTrueFan is to help publishers increase engagement amongst everyday users and time spent on their sites.”

What’s different with OneTrueFan over other location-based services, besides the obvious difference between virtual and physical locations, is that OneTrueFan doesn’t require any additional work on my part to participate. It just hangs out in the bottom of my browsing window slowly tracking my stats and I can stop by my profile whenever I want to see what’s going on. The service leverages your Twitter social graph so there’s no need to go out and seek followers all over again, which is always an annoying feature of many new social networks.

One concern that has continually been brought up with location-based services is privacy. I even spoke about it for an entire segment during a recent NMLTV episode that focused on location-based services. The same concern exists with OneTrueFan because it is sharing your browsing footprint with your entire social graph. There may be websites that you don’t want to share with your followers that you’re accessing. For example, if I’m doing research into a potential New Marketing Labs client, I may not want to share the 2 hours of clicking around all of their web properties with the rest of the world. Luckily, OneTrueFan has thought through that and allows you to hide any specific visit and block any domain from being tracked.

I’m having fun with it so far and will keep playing with it. It’s still very early on for OneTrueFan so it will be interesting to see how it grows up over the coming weeks and months. But, it does have me wondering if we’re going to see a new breed of location-based services that focus on virtual locations as opposed to, or in addition to, physical locations.

If you want to try OneTrueFan, you can find them over at: http://www.onetruefan.com

Have you tried OneTrueFan yet? What are your thoughts of checking-in to websites that you’re visiting?

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LinkedIn Groups has been a part of the core feature set within the professional social network but, in my opinion, was one of the most under-utilized features.  People tend to belong to a lot of Groups that interest them but don’t necessarily engage with them on a constant basis.  One of the reasons is that it took multiple clicks to start a discussion within a group.  With this update LinkedIn is trying to put the focus onto creating conversations by making engagement easier and a key focus of the Groups.

Besides putting more of a focus on conversations, LinkedIn has also added new features including the ability to “Like”, “Pass”, or “Comment” on a discussion taking place within the group.  This will help to bubble up the top conversations within a group.  What I like the most about this is that it will make it quicker to drop in to LinkedIn for a few minutes, jump around to a few Groups, check out what’s going on, engage and bounce back out.  Prior to this update that is what one of the discouraging factors for me to using LinkedIn Groups.  I always felt there was a lot of value in them but it was a time suck to search through the discussion threads in all of the different groups to find the conversations that I found useful or wanted to be a part of.  That all changes now.

Here is a video demoing the new features to help explain it all…

This update makes me even more excited about LinkedIn.  It is a network that I find huge value in but, admittedly, don’t spend a lot of time in.  I tend to spend most of my time over on Twitter (follow me) or Facebook (friend me) and LinkedIn would always come in a distant third.  However, now I’m going to make it a point to spend more time engaging and using LinkedIn more effectively.

Are we connected yet on LinkedIn? If not, it would be awesome to connect and you can also keep updated with New Marketing Labs by following us over there.

Do you find LinkedIn Groups useful? Do you think you’ll spend more time hanging out around Groups with the update?

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One thing everyone deals with as they start signing up for social networks is how transparent (er, naked) they’re going to be.  It is something that you really have to give a lot of thought to.  Who will see the information you post?  What’s the reach of it?  Where do you draw the line between what’s really personal and what’s ok to share?  These are all normal questions that run through a person’s head when they first discover social networking.

With the ability to share so much about yourself comes many concerns.  One of which is a concern for safety.  I am fascinated with BrightKite (though I haven’t done much with it lately), due in part to what fellow pirate Chris Brogan uses it for.  One day someone told me they were scared of it.  Never expected the answer I would get.  That person said they don’t like using location-awareness tools like BrightKite because then people with not such great intentions know where you are….or where you aren’t (like at home).  I didn’t expect that answer because I had never thought of it in that light before.  I can understand where that would be a serious concern.  In my opinion, if someone is set to do harm to you, they will.  They won’t need BrightKite to tell them you’re not home, they’ll see your vehicle is gone.

Another concern that comes up often, even more than safety, is regarding privacy.  Most of these sites require some level of personal information.  Couple that with the type and frequency of the information you choose to share and that gets people worried about their privacy.  It is definitely a real concern but I think similar concerns existed when email, GPS and other forms of technology hit the streets.

So, how much and what should you share?  How naked should you be?

There isn’t one blanket answer.  The feature set of the social network dictates how transparent someone can be.  Everyone has a different comfy level when it comes to sharing aspects of their life.  Also, each users’ community will share and receive information in different ways.  Bottom line is that you need to share what you’re comfortable sharing.  I choose to share a lot about my personal life whether it’s through Twitter updates, photos from my engagement shoot, or sending happy birthday wishes.

I enjoy sharing a lot about myself because it has helped me to find whole niche communities of awesome people to connect with.  I guess that means that I’m that guy running around nearly naked.

I hope that you all continue to enjoy what I share.  Let me know if you want me to share more, it’s just right, or a little less.

How have you addressed how naked you’re willing to be?

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Photo by: Kables

You can download the free ebook here.  Then, after you’re done reading it, make sure you synchronize your social networks.  Are we connected on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Flickr and the others?  If not, take the time to friend me up on these networks.  You can find all of my active networks in the FriendFeed widget to the right.

Also, make sure you subscribe to Marketing Over Coffee.  It is one of the best marketing podcasts out there!

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Tonight I decided to dig through the archives of Gary Vaynerchuk because all of his video blogs are entertaining, informative and motivating. I came across a video where Gary states that “everything is better than zero”. Part of Gary’s point was that you should take everything you can get and be appreciative of it – whether it’s 1 subscriber or 1,000; whether it’s 1 advertiser with a $10 spot or 25 advertisers each with $1,000 spots….whatever it is and no matter the quantity of it, the point is to appreciate it all!

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I first started blogging I wasn’t sure where it would take me but so far it continues to lead to nothing but good things. One of the most important things that blogging and social media has provided me is a group of awesome people who I get to interact with on a daily basis.

So, as I prepare this post in the wee hours of the night since I’ll be attending 3 social media events and hosting a wine dinner in the next 36hrs, I wanted to say thank you to all of you who read this blog and find what I have to say interesting.  You continue to motivate me every day!  It is very humbling to receive comments, emails, pings on various social networks and talking with people in person who tell me that they enjoy reading the blog or what I talk about on Twitter or any of the other networks that I’m active in.  I look forward to continuing to grow this blog and hope that you stick around for the ride!

Thank you, you are all awesome!

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How is it possible to use “the most and least” social networking communities at the same time?

Management, that’s how.

I subscribe to dozens and dozens of different social networking communities, including hundreds of social

Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3

bookmarking sites. The only way this is possible is through management and automation tools such as Ping.fm. Ping allows you to simultaneously update your Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Delicious, Plurk, Flickr and WordPress accounts all at once. I even have Ping.fm set up through my Gtalk Google’s Chat program so all I have to do is send an IM to Ping.fm and everything gets updated.

Tools like Ping.fm allow you to maintain a broader presence online without sacrificing the amount of time needed to achieve the same manually. The only down side to Ping.fm is not being able to see any replies people have posted. This problem can be circumvented by subscribing to all your social networking sites via your RSS reader (if you don’t have an rss reader get one right now, they’re free). So, if you do get a comment or reply back from a post you did on your Twitter, you can see that and reply again.

The automation will save you so much time by not having to log in and out of all your various sites to update your status. This allows you to meet other where they are at no matter what network they user or favor. If you can maintain and meet people where they are at they will be more likely to follow you and pay attention to what you have to say.

Another invaluable tool to use to increase your presence online is a WordPress blog and a few optimized plugins. The first plugin is the All In One SEO. This plugin is a quick and easy to use plugin that lets you optimize every post you do in seconds. The next plugin that is a must is Auto Social Poster.

Auto Social Poster allows you to automatically post your current blog post to hundreds of social bookmarking sites if you so choose. Most people will use just a few of the more popular sites like Delicious and Backflip, but you do have the option to add as many as you would like.

The plugin also allows you to randomly select X number of sites to submit to along with randomly selected keywords. This helps you avoid being banned by any bookmarking sites for over use while ensuring adequate exposure to as many sources as possible.

These tools are just a few of the hundreds out there to help automate your presence online. Time is the most valuable thing you have and the less time you have to spend logging in and out of sites, copying and pasting, waiting for slow load times and so on will allow you to become more productive online.

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